Phenotype analysis of cellular image data using a deep metric network

ABSTRACT

The disclosure relates to phenotype analysis of cellular image data using a machine-learned, deep metric network model. An example method includes receiving, by a computing device, a target image of a target biological cell having a target phenotype. Further, the method includes obtaining, by the computing device, semantic embeddings associated with the target image and each of a plurality of candidate images of candidate biological cells each having a respective candidate phenotype. The semantic embeddings are generated using a machine-learned, deep metric network model. In addition, the method includes determining, by the computing device, a similarity score for each candidate image. Determining the similarity score for a respective candidate image includes computing a vector distance between the respective candidate image and the target image. The similarity score for each candidate image represents a degree of similarity between the target phenotype and the respective candidate phenotype.

BACKGROUND

Understanding mechanisms by which a disease acts can be important when prescribing a treatment regimen for a patient having such a disease. For some diseases, the current state of knowledge may not be at a level that allows for such a treatment regimen to be developed. Thus, methods of improving the level of understanding of disease mechanisms, or of screening for effective treatments even while remaining relatively unknowledgeable about a given disease mechanism, could be useful in treating patients.

Further, machine learning is a field in computing that involves a computing device training a model using “training data.” There are two primary classifications of methods of training models: supervised learning and unsupervised learning. In supervised learning, the training data is classified into data types, and the model is trained to look for variations/similarities among known classifications. In unsupervised learning, the model is trained using training data that is unclassified. Thus, in unsupervised learning, the model is trained to identify similarities based on unlabeled training data.

Once the model has been trained on the training data, the model can then be used to analyze new data (sometimes called “test data”). Based on the model's training, a computing device can use the trained model to evaluate the similarity of the test data.

There are numerous types of machine-learned models, each having its own set of advantages and disadvantages. One popular machine-learned model is an artificial neural network. The artificial neural network involves layers of structure, each trained to identify certain features of an input (e.g., an input image, an input sound file, or an input text file). Each layer may be built upon sub-layers that are trained to identify sub-features of a given feature. For example, an artificial neural network may identify composite objects within an image based on sub-features such as edges or textures.

Given the current state of computing power, in some artificial neural networks many such sub-layers can be established during training of a model. Artificial neural networks that include multiple sub-layers are sometimes referred to as “deep neural networks.” In some deep neural networks, there may be hidden layers and/or hidden sub-layers that identify composites or superpositions of inputs. Such composites or superpositions may not be human-interpretable.

SUMMARY

The specification and drawings disclose embodiments that relate to phenotype analysis of cellular image data using a deep metric network.

In one embodiment, a method of establishing a degree of similarity among two cellular phenotypes using a machine-learned, deep metric network model is described. The method may include recording images (e.g., a target image and multiple candidate images) of multiple cells (e.g., a target cell and one or more candidate cells). The target cell may have a target phenotype (e.g., a healthy phenotype or an unhealthy phenotype against which the one or more candidate cells can be compared). The one or more candidate cells may be cells taken from various areas of a patient or given various treatment regimens (e.g., various concentrations of a prospective drug). Then, using the machine-learned, deep metric network model, a semantic embedding is obtained for each of the images. The semantic embeddings may include values for each dimension among multiple dimensions (e.g., 64 dimensions) within the model. The dimensions may have been defined during the training of the machine-learned, deep metric network, for example. After obtaining the semantic embeddings, the semantic embeddings of the one or more candidate images may be compared to the semantic embedding of the target image. This comparison (e.g., a distance calculation in the n-dimensional space of the semantic embeddings) may yield a similarity score between the target image and the respective candidate image for each candidate image. Based on the similarity scores, then, the degree of similarity between the target phenotype and each of the candidate phenotypes can be ascertained. This could lead to the selection of a treatment regimen. For example, if the target cell corresponds to a healthy phenotype and the candidate cells (originally all having unhealthy phenotypes) were dosed with various concentrations of a candidate drug compound, the candidate image with the highest similarity score would correspond to a candidate cell that has a phenotype closest to the healthy phenotype after treatment. Thus, the dosage of the candidate drug compound used on the candidate cell of the candidate image with the highest similarity score may be prescribed to treat cells within a patient.

In a first aspect, a method is disclosed. The method includes receiving, by a computing device, a target image of a target biological cell having a target phenotype. Further, the method includes obtaining, by the computing device, a semantic embedding associated with the target image. The semantic embedding associated with the target image is generated using a machine-learned, deep metric network model. In addition, the method includes obtaining, by the computing device for each of a plurality of candidate images of candidate biological cells each having a respective candidate phenotype, a semantic embedding associated with the respective candidate image. The semantic embedding associated with the respective candidate image is generated using the machine-learned, deep metric network model. The method additionally includes determining, by the computing device, a similarity score for each candidate image. Determining the similarity score for a respective candidate image includes computing, by the computing device, a vector distance in a multi-dimensional space described by the semantic embeddings between the respective candidate image and the target image. The similarity score for each candidate image represents a degree of similarity between the target phenotype and the respective candidate phenotype.

In a second aspect, a non-transitory, computer-readable medium is disclosed. The non-transitory, computer-readable medium has instructions stored thereon. The instructions, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to execute a method. The method includes receiving, by the processor, a target image of a target biological cell having a target phenotype. Further, the method includes obtaining, by the processor, a semantic embedding associated with the target image. The semantic embedding associated with the target image is generated using a machine-learned, deep metric network model. In addition, the method includes obtaining, by the processor for each of a plurality of candidate images of candidate biological cells each having a respective candidate phenotype, a semantic embedding associated with the respective candidate image. The semantic embedding associated with the respective candidate image is generated using the machine-learned, deep metric network model. The method additionally includes determining, by the processor, a similarity score for each candidate image. Determining the similarity score for a respective candidate image includes computing, by the processor, a vector distance in a multi-dimensional space described by the semantic embeddings between the respective candidate image and the target image. The similarity score for each candidate image represents a degree of similarity between the target phenotype and the respective candidate phenotype.

In a third aspect, a method is disclosed. The method includes preparing a multi-well sample plate with a target biological cell having a target phenotype and candidate biological cells. The method also includes applying a variety of candidate treatment regimens to each of the candidate biological cells. Further, the method includes recording a target image of the target biological cell. In addition, the method includes recording candidate images of each of the candidate biological cells, each having a respective candidate phenotype arising in response to the candidate treatment regimen being applied. The method additionally includes receiving, by a computing device, the target image and the candidate images. Still further, the method includes obtaining, by the computing device, a semantic embedding associated with the target image. The semantic embedding associated with the target image is generated using a machine-learned, deep metric network model. Also, the method includes obtaining, by the computing device for each candidate image, a semantic embedding associated with the respective candidate image. The semantic embedding associated with the respective candidate image is generated using the machine-learned, deep metric network model. Even further, the method includes determining, by the computing device, a similarity score for each candidate image. Determining the similarity score for a respective candidate image includes computing, by the computing device, a vector distance in a multi-dimensional space described by the semantic embeddings between the respective candidate image and the target image. The similarity score for each candidate image represents a degree of similarity between the target phenotype and the respective candidate phenotype. Yet further, the method includes selecting, by the computing device, a preferred treatment regimen among the variety of candidate treatment regimens based on the similarity scores.

In a fourth aspect, a system is disclosed. The system includes a means for receiving a target image of a target biological cell having a target phenotype. Further, the system includes a means for obtaining a semantic embedding associated with the target image. The semantic embedding associated with the target image is generated using a machine-learned, deep metric network model. In addition, the system includes a means for obtaining, for each of a plurality of candidate images of candidate biological cells each having a respective candidate phenotype, a semantic embedding associated with the respective candidate image. The semantic embedding associated with the respective candidate image is generated using the machine-learned, deep metric network model. The system additionally includes a means for determining a similarity score for each candidate image. The means for determining the similarity score for a respective candidate image includes a means for computing a vector distance in a multi-dimensional space described by the semantic embeddings between the respective candidate image and the target image. The similarity score for each candidate image represents a degree of similarity between the target phenotype and the respective candidate phenotype.

In a fifth aspect, a system is disclosed. The system includes a means for preparing a multi-well sample plate with a target biological cell having a target phenotype and candidate biological cells. The system also includes a means for applying a variety of candidate treatment regimens to each of the candidate biological cells. Further, the system includes means for recording a target image of the target biological cell. In addition, the system includes a means for recording candidate images of each of the candidate biological cells, each having a respective candidate phenotype arising in response to the candidate treatment regimen being applied. The system additionally includes a means for receiving the target image and the candidate images. Still further, the system includes a means for obtaining a semantic embedding associated with the target image. The semantic embedding associated with the target image is generated using a machine-learned, deep metric network model. Also, the system includes a means for obtaining, for each candidate image, a semantic embedding associated with the respective candidate image. The semantic embedding associated with the respective candidate image is generated using the machine-learned, deep metric network model. Even further, the system includes a means for determining a similarity score for each candidate image. The means for determining the similarity score for a respective candidate image includes a means for computing a vector distance in a multi-dimensional space described by the semantic embeddings between the respective candidate image and the target image. The similarity score for each candidate image represents a degree of similarity between the target phenotype and the respective candidate phenotype. Yet further, the system includes a means for selecting a preferred treatment regimen among the variety of candidate treatment regimens based on the similarity scores.

The foregoing summary is illustrative only and is not intended to be in any way limiting. In addition to the illustrative aspects, embodiments, and features described above, further aspects, embodiments, and features will become apparent by reference to the figures and the following detailed description.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

FIG. 1 is an illustration of a three-image set, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 2A is a graphical illustration of an un-normalized set of phenotypic data, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 2B is a graphical illustration of a normalized set of phenotypic data, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 2C is a graphical illustration of an un-normalized set of phenotypic data, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 2D is a graphical illustration of a normalized set of phenotypic data, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 3A is a graphical illustration of a data set having a candidate phenotype and a target phenotype, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 3B is a graphical illustration of a target phenotype and a threshold similarity score, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 4A is a tabular illustration of an un-normalized data set having a target phenotype and six candidate phenotypes, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 4B is a graphical illustration of an un-normalized data set having a target phenotype and six candidate phenotypes, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 4C is a tabular illustration of vector distances between candidate phenotypes and a target phenotype, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 4D is a tabular illustration of a normalized data set having a target phenotype and six candidate phenotypes, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 4E is a graphical illustration of a normalized data set having a target phenotype and six candidate phenotypes, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 4F is a tabular illustration of vector distances between candidate phenotypes and a target phenotype, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 5A is an illustration of an unscaled image of multiple cells, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 5B is an illustration of a scaled image of multiple cells, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 5C is an illustration of a single-cell selection process in an image, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 5D is an illustration of a single-cell image, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 6A is an illustration of a composite scientific image, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 6B is an illustration of a channel that is part of a scientific image, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 6C is an illustration of a channel that is part of a scientific image, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 6D is an illustration of a channel that is part of a scientific image, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 7 is an illustration of a process, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 8 is an illustration of anatomical regions of a patient from which candidate biological cells and a target biological cell may be acquired, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 9 is an illustration of a multi-well sample plate, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 10 is an illustration of a method, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 11 is an illustration of a method, according to example embodiments.

FIG. 12 is an illustration of a system, according to example embodiments.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Example methods and systems are described herein. Any example embodiment or feature described herein is not necessarily to be construed as preferred or advantageous over other embodiments or features. The example embodiments described herein are not meant to be limiting. It will be readily understood that certain aspects of the disclosed systems and methods can be arranged and combined in a wide variety of different configurations, all of which are contemplated herein.

Furthermore, the particular arrangements shown in the figures should not be viewed as limiting. It should be understood that other embodiments might include more or less of each element shown in a given figure. In addition, some of the illustrated elements may be combined or omitted. Similarly, an example embodiment may include elements that are not illustrated in the figures.

I. OVERVIEW

Example embodiments may relate to phenotype analysis of cellular image data using a machine-learned, deep metric network model. The model may be used to generate, for images of cells having various different phenotypes, semantic embeddings from which the similarity of those images can be determined.

Establishing similarity between multiple phenotypes may allow for the study of biological pathways. For example, multiple candidate biological cells may be treated with various compounds. The time-evolution of the phenotypes of those candidate biological cells can then be compared to one another. This may allow for a study of mechanisms of action within the candidate biological cells.

In alternate embodiments, target cells having target phenotypes may be compared with candidate cells having candidate phenotypes to establish whether the candidate cells can be classified as healthy or unhealthy cells. For example, if the target cell is known to have a healthy (or unhealthy) phenotype, and it is determined that the candidate cells have a sufficiently similar phenotype to the target phenotype, the candidate cells may be deemed to have a healthy (or unhealthy) phenotype. Further, techniques as described herein may be used to compare cells acquired from various anatomical regions of a patient's body with one another (e.g., to determine if a disease has progressed from one anatomical region of a patient's body to another).

Even further, if candidate cells are known to initially have an unhealthy phenotype, the candidate cells may then be treated with various candidate treatment regimens (e.g., various candidate treatment compounds, various candidate concentrations of a candidate treatment compound, or various candidate treatment durations). After treatment, the similarity between the candidate cells and a target cell having a healthy phenotype may then be determined. The candidate treatment regimens may then be ranked in successfulness based on the corresponding candidate cells phenotypic similarity to the target cell. Such a technique can be used to develop treatment regimens for patients, for example.

Embodiments may use a machine-learned, deep metric network model (e.g., executed by a computing device) to facilitate image comparisons of biological cells having various cellular phenotypes. The machine-learned, deep metric network model may be trained, for example, using consumer photographic training data. The consumer photographic training data may include a number of three-image sets (e.g., 33 million three-image sets, 100 million three-image sets, 1 billion three-image sets, 10 billion three-image sets, or 33 billion three-image sets). The three-image sets may be generated based on query results (e.g., user internet search results). Additionally, the three-image sets may include images that depict a wide variety of scenes, not solely biological cells or even scientific data. For example, one three-image set may include three images of automobiles, a second three-image set may include three images of animals, and a third three-image set may include three images of cities.

Further, each three-image set may include a query image, a positive image, and a negative image. The query image may be an image that was searched by a user, for example, and the positive image may have been identified by the user as being more similar to the query image than the negative image was to the query image. Based on these three-image sets, a computing device may refine the machine-learned, deep metric network model. Refining the model may include developing one or more semantic embeddings that describe similarities between images. For example, a semantic embedding may have multiple dimensions (e.g., 64 dimensions) that correspond to various qualities of an image (e.g., shapes, textures, image content, relative sizes of objects, and perspective). The dimensions of the semantic embeddings could be either human-interpretable or non-human interpretable. In some embodiments, for example, one or more of the dimensions may be superpositions of human-interpretable features.

While the machine-learned, deep metric network may have been trained using consumer photographic data, the model can be applied to data which is not consumer photographic (e.g., images of cells or other scientific images). The use of a machine-learned, deep metric network model on types of data other than those on which it was trained is sometimes referred to as “transfer learning.” In order to use the machine-learned, deep metric network model to compare scientific images, the scientific images may be converted or transformed to a format that is commensurate with the model. Converting the scientific images (e.g., target images of target biological cells or candidate images of candidate biological cells) may include scaling or cropping the respective scientific image (e.g., such that the respective scientific image has a size and/or an aspect ratio that can be compared using the model) or converting channels of the scientific images to grayscale. Additional pre-processing may occur prior to using the machine-learned, deep metric network model for phenotype comparison (e.g., the scientific image may be cropped around a nucleus, such that only one cell is within the scientific image).

Two scientific images may then be compared (e.g., by a computing device) by comparing semantic embeddings generated for the images using the machine-learned, deep metric network model. For example, one scientific image may be a candidate image of a candidate biological cell having a candidate phenotype and a second scientific image may be a target image of a target biological cell having a target phenotype. The two images may be compared, using their semantic embeddings, to determine a similarity score between the two images. The similarity score may represent how similar the cellular phenotypes depicted in the two images are.

To compare the two images, a semantic embedding may be obtained for each image using the machine-learned, deep metric network model (e.g., by a computing device). The semantic embeddings may have dimensions that correspond to dimensions associated with the machine-learned, deep metric network model developed during training. Obtaining a semantic embedding for each image may include, in some embodiments, obtaining a semantic embedding for each channel within the image and then concatenating the single-channel semantic embeddings into a unified semantic embedding for the entire image.

In embodiments where multiple images are recorded and analyzed using the machine-learned, deep metric network model, normalization (e.g., typical variation normalization) can be performed. Normalization may include scaling and/or shifting the values of one or more of the dimensions of the semantic embeddings in some or all of the images (e.g., the values may be scaled and/or shifted in a given dimension based on negative control groups). Further, the values may be scaled and/or shifted such that the distribution of values across all images for certain dimensions may have specified characteristics. For example, the values may be scaled and/or shifted such that the distribution for a given dimension has zero-mean and unit variance. In some embodiments, the normalization may be performed after using principal component analysis (PCA). Additionally, in some embodiments, all dimensions may be scaled and/or shifted to have zero-mean and unit variance (i.e., the dimensions may be “whitened”).

After obtaining semantic embeddings for the images using the machine-learned, deep metric network model, similarity scores can be calculated. The similarity score for a candidate image/phenotype may correspond to the vector distance in n-dimensional space (e.g., where n is the number of dimensions defined within the semantic embeddings of the machine-learned, deep metric network model) between the candidate image/phenotype and the target image/phenotype. In alternate embodiments, the similarity score may correspond to an inverse of the vector distance in n-dimensional space. In still other embodiments, similarity scores may also be calculated between two candidate images or even between two channels within the same image.

After calculating one or more similarity scores, the similarity scores may be analyzed. For example, each of the similarity scores may be compared against a threshold similarity score, with similarity scores greater than (or less than) or equal to the threshold similarity score corresponding to candidate images of candidate cells having candidate phenotypes that are deemed to be the same as the target phenotype of the target biological cell in the target image. In other embodiments, the candidate images may be ranked by similarity score. In such embodiments, the highest similarity score may correspond to a candidate biological cell with a candidate phenotype that is most similar to the target phenotype. If the candidate biological cells were treated with various candidate treatment regimens, and the target phenotype represents a healthy phenotype, then the candidate treatment regimen used to produce the candidate phenotype corresponding to the highest similarity score may be identified as a potentially effective treatment regimen that could be applied to a patient.

II. EXAMPLE PROCESSES

FIG. 1 is an illustration of a three-image set 100, according to example embodiments. The three-image set 100 includes a query image 102, a positive image 104, and a negative image 106. The three-image set 100 may be an example of a three-image set used as training date for a machine-learned, deep metric network model (e.g., used during unsupervised training of the machine-learned, deep metric network). Each image in the three-image set 100 may be a three channel (e.g., with a red channel, a green channel, and a blue channel) consumer photograph. Further, each channel may have an 8-bit depth (e.g., may have a decimal value between 0 and 255, inclusive, for each pixel in each channel that indicates the intensity of the pixel). Other numbers of channels and bit depths are also possible, in various embodiments. In some embodiments, each image in a three-image set, or even each image across all three-image sets, may have a standardized size (e.g., 200 pixels by 200 pixels).

Further, the query image 102, the positive image 104, and the negative image 106 may be internet search results. In some embodiments, based on user feedback, the positive image 104 may be more similar to the query image 102 than the positive image 104 is to the negative image 106. In some embodiments, the three-image sets used as training data for the machine-learned, deep metric network may not depict biological cells/phenotypes. For example, the query image could be a car, the positive image could be a truck, and the negative image could be an airplane.

Various features of the query image 102, the positive image 104, and the negative image 106 may influence the user feedback. Some example features include shapes, textures, image content, relative sizes of objects, and perspective depicted in the query image 102, the positive image 104, and the negative image 106. Other features are also possible. In the example illustrated in FIG. 1, the positive image 104 includes the same set of shapes as the query image 102, but in a different arrangement. Conversely, the negative image 106 includes a different set of shapes from the query image 102.

In some embodiments, a computing device may use multiple three-image sets (e.g., about 100 million total images or about 100 million three-image sets) to define semantic embeddings within the machine-learned, deep metric network model. For example, the computing device may establish 64 dimensions within semantic embeddings of the machine-learned, deep metric network model for each channel of the images in the three-image sets. In other embodiments, other numbers of dimensions are also possible. The dimensions may contain information corresponding to the various features of the three-image sets used to train the machine-learned, deep metric network model. Further, for images assigned semantic embeddings according to the machine-learned, deep metric network model, the semantic embeddings can be used to analyze the degree of similarity between two images (e.g., based on a vector distance in a multi-dimensional space defined by the semantic embeddings between the two images, i.e., a similarity score).

Additionally, the features within the three-image sets used by a computing device to update the machine-learned, deep metric model may be selected based on the positive image 104, the query image 102, and the negative image 106 (as opposed to pre-identified by a programmer, for instance). In other words, the process used by a computing device to train the machine-learned, deep metric network model may include unsupervised learning. The features used to define various dimensions of the semantic embeddings may be human-interpretable (e.g., colors, sizes, textures, or shapes) or non-human-interpretable (e.g., superpositions of human-interpretable features), in various embodiments.

FIG. 2A is a graphical illustration of an un-normalized set of phenotypic data, according to example embodiments. For example, the phenotypic data may correspond to biological cells in candidate images, target images, and/or control group images being analyzed using a machine-learned, deep metric network model. The phenotypic data may represent the number (“counts”) of biological cells from the group of biological cells (e.g., candidate biological cells) that have a given value for a given dimension (X₁) of a semantic embedding. As illustrated, the number of biological cells having a given value for the given dimension (X₁) of the semantic embedding may be pseudo-continuous (or approximated as a continuous function). In other words, any value of the dimension (X₁) within a given range is occupied by at least one of the biological cells in the group. However, in alternate embodiments, only discrete values of the dimension (X₁) may be possible, in which case the illustration of the distribution of the data may more closely resemble a bar graph.

The distribution illustrated in FIG. 2A may have a mean value (<X₁>) and a standard deviation (σ_(X) ₁ ). As illustrated, the mean value (<X₁>) is positive. The distribution illustrated in FIG. 2A may represent a distribution that is not normalized. For example, the distribution illustrated in FIG. 2A may be a distribution as it is recorded from images of candidate biological cells after obtaining a semantic embedding, but prior to any other processing (e.g., normalization).

FIG. 2B is a graphical illustration of a normalized set of phenotypic data, according to example embodiments. The data set illustrated in FIG. 2B may be a modified equivalent of the data set illustrated in FIG. 2A (e.g., after normalization). Such a modification may be a result of scaling (e.g., by multiplication) and/or shifting (e.g., by addition) of the values of semantic embeddings of each image in the data set by a given amount (e.g., a scaling factor). In some embodiments, the phenotypic data may be normalized (e.g., scaled or shifted) based on phenotypic data from a negative control group (e.g., an unperturbed control group) or a positive control group (e.g., a control group treated with a candidate compound that yields a known response or a control group having phenotypes of a known disease state). For example, it may be known that a control group's phenotypic data has an expected mean and an expected standard deviation. If, after obtaining the semantic embeddings, the control group's phenotypic data does not have the expected mean and/or the expected standard deviation, the control groups phenotypic data may be normalized (e.g., scaled and/or shifted by one or more factors). Thereafter, phenotypic data for sets of cells other than the control group (e.g., from a candidate group of cells) may be normalized in a way corresponding to the normalization of the control group (e.g., scaled and/or shifted by the same one or more factors).

As illustrated, the data set in FIG. 2B may be normalized such that the mean value (<X′₁>) of the dimension (X₁) of the semantic embedding is zero (i.e., the distribution of data is zero-centered). Other mean values are also possible in alternate embodiments (e.g., a positive mean value, a negative mean value, a unity mean value, etc.). Further, the data set illustrated in FIG. 2B may be normalized such that the standard deviation (σ′_(X) ₁ ) of the dimension (X₁) of the semantic embedding is 1.0. This may correspond to the data set also having a unit variance (i.e., σ′² _(X) ₁ =1.0) for the dimension (X₁) of the semantic embedding.

A similar normalization to that illustrated in FIG. 2B may be applied to multiple dimensions of the semantic embedding. By normalizing values in each dimension to a standardized mean and variance, each dimension may have equal weighting (i.e., equal influence) on a distance between two phenotypes as each other dimension. Said another way, each dimension may equally impact a resulting similarity score. Further, the normalization illustrated in FIG. 2B may prevent aberrant or extraneous phenotypic results from overly influencing the impact score (e.g., a large variation with respect to a target phenotype in a single dimension of a candidate phenotype may not outweigh a series of relatively small variations with respect to the target phenotype in alternate dimensions of the candidate phenotype).

When comparing the normalized set of phenotypic data illustrated in FIG. 2B to the non-normalized set of phenotypic data illustrated in FIG. 2A, it is apparent that the normalized mean (<X′₁>) has a value of zero (as opposed to a positive value), and the standard deviation (σ′_(X) ₁ ) was reduced (e.g., from 1.5 to 1.0). An analogous normalization is illustrated graphically in FIGS. 2C and 2D for a second dimension (X₂) of the semantic embedding. In FIG. 2C, an un-normalized set of the phenotypic data has a negative mean value (<X₂>) and a greater than unit standard deviation (σ_(X) ₂ ) for the second dimension (X₂). Once normalized, as illustrated in FIG. 2D, the set of phenotypic data may have a mean of zero (<X′₂>) and a unit variance (σ′² _(X) ₂ ) of 1.0. In some embodiments, normalizing the phenotypic data illustrated in FIG. 2D may involve scaling the data by a value (i.e., a scaling factor) less than 1.0 and shifting the data by a positive value (i.e., a positive shifting value).

In some embodiments, a normalization process may include only adding a shift to the phenotypic data (e.g., to adjust the mean of the data). Alternatively, the normalization process may include only scaling the phenotypic data (e.g., to adjust the standard deviation of the data). In various embodiments, various dimensions of the phenotypic data for a given semantic embedding may be shifted and/or scaled differently from one another. Further, in some embodiments, one or more of the dimensions of the phenotypic data for a given semantic embedding may not be normalized at all. The data may not be normalized if the phenotypic data for one of the dimensions inherently has the desired statistical distribution to match with the other dimensions. Alternatively, the data may not be normalized so that the values of the phenotypic data for a given dimension either intentionally over-influence or intentionally under-influence similarity scores with respect to the rest of the dimensions of the semantic embedding.

As illustrated in FIGS. 2A-2D, both the un-normalized and the normalized distributions of the phenotypic data for a given dimension (e.g., X₁ or X₂) may be approximately Gaussian. In some embodiments, however, the un-normalized and the normalized distributions may be pseudo-Gaussian or non-Gaussian. In some embodiments, the phenotypic data for some dimensions may be Gaussian while the phenotypic data for other dimensions may be non-Gaussian. Further, in some embodiments, the un-normalized distributions for a given dimension may be non-Gaussian and may be normalized in such a way that the normalized distributions for the given dimension may be approximately or actually Gaussian. Various embodiments may have various graphical shapes for the phenotypic data in various dimensions.

In addition to the normalization illustrated in FIGS. 2A-2D, a transformation of the phenotypic data may be performed to ensure that the dimensions generated for a given semantic embedding are orthogonal to one another (i.e., to prevent certain dimensions from being linear combinations of other dimensions). This may prevent redundant data from influencing similarity scores, for example. In alternate embodiments, orthogonal transformations of the dimensions may occur during the training of the machine-learned, deep metric network (i.e., rather than during phenotypic data analysis).

The orthogonal transformations may include performing PCA, for example. PCA may include calculating eigenvectors and/or eigenvalues of a covariance matrix defined by the phenotypic data in each dimension. In some embodiments, the orthogonal transformation may also include a dimensionality reduction. Having fewer dimensions within a semantic embedding may conserve memory within a storage device of a computing device (e.g., within a volatile memory or a non-volatile memory) by preventing as much data from being stored to describe a phenotypic data set. Again, the above steps may be performed during the training of the machine-learned, deep metric network. Additionally or alternatively, normalizing the data may include performing a whitening transform on the phenotypic data (e.g., to transform the phenotypic data such that it has an identity covariance matrix).

FIG. 3A is a graphical illustration of a data set 300 having a candidate phenotype and a target phenotype, according to example embodiments. The candidate phenotype may correspond to a candidate image of a candidate biological cell. Similarly, the target phenotype may correspond to a target image of a target biological cell. For both the candidate phenotype and the target phenotype, the values of each of the dimensions may be found by analyzing the candidate image and the target image, respectively, using the machine-learned, deep metric network model. Further, the values of each of the dimensions illustrated in FIG. 3A may be normalized or un-normalized. The candidate phenotype and the target phenotype are depicted as vectors, each having a respective first dimension (X₁) value and a respective second dimension (X₂) value.

As illustrated in FIG. 3A, the semantic embedding used to define the candidate phenotype and the target phenotype has two dimensions (namely, X₁ and X₂). FIG. 3A is provided to illustrate an example embodiment. In various other embodiments, other numbers of dimensions may also be possible. For example, in some embodiments, the semantic embeddings may include 16, 32, 64, 128, 192, or 256, or 320 dimensions.

Also illustrated in FIG. 3A is a vector representing the similarity score between the target phenotype vector and the candidate phenotype vector. The similarity score vector may be equal to the target phenotype vector minus the candidate phenotype vector. The magnitude (i.e., length) of the similarity score vector may correspond to a value of the similarity score. Said another way, the distance between the target phenotype vector and the candidate phenotype vector may be equal to the similarity score. The vector distance may be calculated using the following formula (where X represents each dimension defined within the semantic embedding):

${Distance} = \sqrt{\sum\limits_{i}\left( {X_{i_{target}} - X_{i_{candidate}}} \right)^{2}}$ In such embodiments, the lower the value of the similarity score, the more similar two phenotypes may be.

In other embodiments, the value of the similarity score may correspond to the inverse of the magnitude of the similarity score vector. Said another way, the inverse of the distance between the target phenotype vector and the candidate phenotype vector is equal to the similarity score. In these alternate embodiments, the greater the value of the similarity score, the more similar two phenotypes may be. Methods of calculating similarity score other than distance and inverse distance are also possible (e.g., a cosine similarity may be calculated to determine similarity score).

FIG. 3B is a graphical illustration 310 of a target phenotype and a threshold similarity score, according to example embodiments. The target phenotype may correspond to a target image of a target biological cell. For the target phenotype, the values of each of the dimensions may be found by analyzing the target image using the machine-learned, deep metric network. Further, the values of each of the dimensions illustrated in FIG. 3B may be normalized or un-normalized. The target phenotype is depicted as a vector, having a respective first dimension (X₁) value and a respective second dimension (X₂) value.

Illustrated as a circle in FIG. 3B is a threshold similarity score. The threshold similarity score may define a maximum distance at which other phenotypes are considered to be substantially the same as the target phenotype. In some embodiments (e.g., embodiments where similarity score is defined as the inverse of the distance between the target phenotype and another phenotype), the threshold similarity score may define a minimum similarity score value at which other phenotypes are considered to be substantially the same as the target phenotype.

For example, if the target phenotype is an unhealthy phenotype, any candidate phenotype with a combination of values for each of the dimensions such that a vector representing the candidate phenotype resides within the circle defined by the threshold similarity score may be considered an unhealthy phenotype. Similarly, if the target phenotype is a healthy phenotype, any candidate phenotype with a combination of values for each of the dimensions such that a vector representing the candidate phenotype resides within the circle defined by the threshold similarity score may be considered a healthy phenotype. In alternate embodiments, where the semantic embeddings define a multi-dimensional space having n-dimensions (rather than two, as illustrated in FIG. 3B), the threshold similarity score may correspond to an n-dimensional surface. For example, in semantic embeddings having three dimensions, the threshold similarity score may correspond to a spherical shell, as opposed to a circle.

FIG. 4A is a tabular illustration of an un-normalized data set 400 having a target phenotype and six candidate phenotypes, according to example embodiments. The use of a single target phenotype and six candidate phenotypes is purely by way of example. In various alternate embodiments, there may be greater or fewer target phenotypes and/or candidate phenotypes.

The target phenotype may correspond to a healthy phenotype or an unhealthy phenotype of a target biological cell of a target image, in various embodiments. In other embodiments, the target phenotype may correspond to a known disease state or mutation type. Alternatively, in some embodiments, the target phenotype may be defined based on optimized and/or desired values for each of the dimensions, as opposed to an actual target image of a target biological cell. For example, if Y₁ corresponded to a cellular size, the target phenotype may have a value of Y₁ such that a corresponding biological cell having the target phenotype has a specified surface area (e.g., 50 μm²).

Further, the candidate phenotypes may correspond to candidate images of candidate biological cells acquired from various anatomical regions of a patient during a biopsy, treated with various concentrations of a candidate treatment compound, and/or treated with various candidate treatment compounds. The candidate images of such candidate biological cells may have been recorded from images of a multi-well sample plate. As illustrated, each phenotype in the un-normalized data set 400 may have values corresponding to various dimensions (e.g., Y₁ and Y₂) of a semantic embedding. In some embodiments, the various dimensions may correspond to human interpretable or non-human interpretable features of the semantic embeddings.

FIG. 4B is a graphical illustration 402 of the un-normalized data set 400 having the target phenotype and the six candidate phenotypes (as illustrated in FIG. 4A), according to example embodiments. As illustrated, each of the target phenotype and the candidate phenotypes are represented as vectors in the two-dimensional space defined by the orthogonal dimensions Y₂ and Y₁. The phenotypes in FIG. 4B that are nearer to one another (i.e., those phenotypes whose vector endpoints are shorter distances away from one another) may be more similar to one another. For example, as illustrated in FIG. 4B, Candidate Phenotype₂ may be more similar to Candidate Phenotype₁ than it is to Candidate Phenotype₄. As another example, as illustrated in FIG. 4B, the Target Phenotype may be more similar to Candidate Phenotype₅ than it is to Candidate Phenotype₃.

FIG. 4C is a tabular illustration 404 of vector distances 405 between candidate phenotypes and a target phenotype of the un-normalized data set 400 illustrated in FIGS. 4A and 4B, according to example embodiments. The vector distances 405 may be calculated using the formula described with respect to FIG. 3A, for example. In some embodiments, the vector distances 405 may correspond to the similarity score between the candidate phenotypes and the target phenotype. In other embodiments, the vector distances 405 may correspond to the inverse of the similarity score between the candidate phenotypes and the target phenotype.

In some embodiments, the vector distances 405 between the target phenotype and the candidate phenotypes may be ranked (e.g., ordered ascendingly or decreasingly) to determine which of the candidate phenotypes is nearest to the target phenotype. Such a ranking may allow for a determination to be made regarding which of the candidate phenotypes is most similar to the target phenotype. Additionally or alternatively, the candidate phenotypes may be grouped into similarity sets based on one or more threshold distances or threshold similarity scores. For example, using the vector distances 405 illustrated in FIG. 4C, the candidate phenotypes may be grouped into three groups (e.g., one group whose vector distances to the target phenotype are between 0.00 and 3.00, a second group whose vector distances to the target phenotype are between 3.00 and 6.00, and a third group whose vector distances to the target phenotype are greater than 6.00). In such an example embodiment, there may be two threshold vector distances (one at 3.00 and one at 6.00). In other embodiments there may be greater or fewer numbers of threshold vector distances (e.g., 0, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 20, 50, 100, etc.).

In some embodiments, distances between candidate phenotypes may be calculated in addition to distances between the candidate phenotypes and the target phenotype. Such additional distance calculations may allow for further similarity analysis among candidate phenotypes.

FIG. 4D is a tabular illustration of a normalized data set 406 having a target phenotype and six candidate phenotypes, according to example embodiments. The normalized data set 406 may correspond to the un-normalized data set 400 illustrated in FIGS. 4A-4C after normalization. As illustrated, the normalized dimensions (Y′₁ and Y′₂) may correspond to the un-normalized dimensions (Y₁ and Y₂) after a normalization that includes scaling Y₁ by a scaling factor of 0.5. Also as illustrated, the normalization of the Y₂ components of the un-normalized data set 400 yielded equivalent values for the Y′₂ components of the normalized data set 406.

In some embodiments, the values of the second dimension (Y₂) may be multiplied by a non-unity scaling factor as well, in order to produce the normalized data set. Additionally or alternatively, in alternate embodiments, one or both of the dimensions of the normalized data set may be shifted by a certain amount with respect to the un-normalized data set. In alternate embodiments having additional dimensions (e.g., 64, 128, 192, or 256 dimensions), additional values for additional dimensions of the target phenotype and/or the candidate phenotypes may also be normalized to achieve a normalized data set.

The un-normalized data set 400 may be normalized to achieve the normalized data set 406 for multiple reasons. In some embodiments, one reason for normalization may be to generate a set of dimensions that have a mean of zero and a unit-variance (i.e., the normalization may include “whitening”). If all dimensions within a data set exhibit such a normalized quality, they may not be as prone to outliers strongly influencing the similarity scores.

Additionally or alternatively, another reason for normalization may be to account for typical variation within biological cells (e.g., based on the phenotypes of negative control groups or positive control groups). Because unperturbed biological cell populations may include a range of values across all or most of the dimensions of morphological variation, it may be important to identify those variations that indicate similarity between the candidate phenotypes and the target phenotype and those variations that arise due to common morphological variation. Accounting for typical variation may include finding dimensions of common morphological variation among the candidate phenotypes and then reducing the effect of “nuisances” (e.g., false positives) by normalizing those dimensions. Such a normalization process may increase or reduce the similarity score of candidate phenotypes that are relatively abnormal with respect to the similarity score of candidate phenotypes that are relatively common. Accounting for typical variation may include finding the eigenvalues and the eigenvectors of a covariance matrix of the dimensions using PCA, for example. Further, the transforms used during PCA may be applied to the values of the dimensions of the candidate phenotypes and the target phenotype to further normalize the dimensions.

FIG. 4E is a graphical illustration 408 of the normalized data set 406 having the target phenotype and the six candidate phenotypes, according to example embodiments. As illustrated, the phenotypes of the normalized data set 406 are closer to one another in the Y′₁ direction than the phenotypes of the un-normalized data set 400 are to one another in the Y₁ direction. Similar to FIG. 4B, the phenotypes in FIG. 4E that are nearer to one another (i.e., those phenotypes whose vector endpoints are shorter distances away from one another) may be more similar to one another.

FIG. 4F is a tabular illustration 410 of vector distances 411 between candidate phenotypes and a target phenotype of the normalized data set 406 illustrated in FIGS. 4D and 4E, according to example embodiments. Similar to the vector distances 405 illustrated in FIG. 4C, the vector distances 411 may be calculated using the formula described with respect to FIG. 3A, for example. Also similar to FIG. 4C, the vector distances 411 may correspond to the similarity scores or inverses of similarity scores and the vector distances 411 may additionally be ranked or grouped.

FIG. 5A is an illustration of an unscaled image 510 of multiple cells 512, according to example embodiments. As illustrated, each cell 512 may have an identifiable nucleus 514. The cells 512 may include candidate biological cells and/or target biological cells. Further, the cells 512 may have healthy and/or unhealthy phenotypes. In addition, the cells 512 may be from different anatomical regions of a patient, from different patients, treated with different candidate treatment compounds, treated with different concentrations of the same candidate treatment compound, treated with different candidate treatment durations, or have a variety of mechanisms of action. Alternatively, the cells 512 in the unscaled image 510 may be in a negative control group or a positive control group.

The unscaled image 510 may be recorded photographically using one or more cameras (e.g., from above one or more wells of a multi-well sample plate), in some embodiments. Additionally, the cameras may include one or more optical filters to observe specific targeted regions of the cells 512. For example, the cells 512, or part of the cells 512, such as the nuclei 514, may be dyed with a fluorescent compound that fluoresces at a specific wavelength range. The optical filters may be configured to filter out light outside of the specific wavelength range. In such a way, the unscaled image 510 may be an image of only the targeted regions of the cells 512. In other embodiments, the unscaled image 510 may be a composite image that includes multiple channels (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 channels), each channel corresponding to a different section of the cells 512 and/or a different wavelength range.

The unscaled image 510 may be various sizes and have various aspect ratios in various embodiments. For example, the unscaled image 510 may be a standardized image size (e.g., 640 pixels by 480 pixels, 256 pixels by 256 pixels, 128 pixels by 128 pixels, or 100 pixels by 100 pixels) or have a standardized aspect ratio (e.g., width to height ratio of 4:3, 1:1, 2:1, 1:2, etc.). Alternatively, the unscaled image 510 may have an irregular image size and/or aspect ratio. For example, the image size and/or aspect ratio may depend on the device (e.g., camera or charge-coupled device, CCD) used to record the unscaled image 510.

Further, the unscaled image 510 may be received by a computing device to perform image analysis and comparison (e.g., using a machine-learned, deep metric network). Prior to performing image analysis, the unscaled image 510 may be transformed in one or more ways. Alternatively, in some embodiments, the computing device may analyze the unscaled image 510 in the format it is received, without manipulating or transforming the unscaled image 510 (e.g., because the unscaled image 510 is already an appropriate size/scale for interpretation using a machine-learned, deep metric network model or because the machine-learned, deep metric network model can be used to interpret images of any size or scale).

FIG. 5B is an illustration of a scaled image 520 of multiple cells 522, according to example embodiments. As illustrated, each cell 522 may have an identifiable nucleus 524. The scaled image 520 may be a scaled version of the unscaled image 510, for example. As illustrated, the unscaled image 510 of FIG. 5A may be transformed into the scaled image 520 of FIG. 5B by scaling the horizontal direction of the image by a factor between 0.0 and 1.0 (e.g., 0.5). The scaled image 520 may have an appropriate size (e.g., 640 pixels by 480 pixels, 256 pixels by 256 pixels, 128 pixels by 128 pixels, or 100 pixels by 100 pixels) or aspect ratio (e.g., width to height ratio of 4:3, 1:1, 2:1, 1:2, etc.) to be interpretable using the machine-learned, deep metric network.

The scaling illustrated in FIG. 5B may be one of a number of transformations performed on the unscaled image 510 prior to analysis, by a computing device, of the image using a machine-learned, deep metric network model.

FIG. 5C is an illustration of a single-cell selection process 530 in an image, according to example embodiments. The single-cell selection process 530 may be an additional method used to transform an unscaled image (e.g., the unscaled image 510 illustrated in FIG. 5A) prior to analysis using a machine-learned, deep metric network model. The image originally received by a computing device may include multiple biological cells 532. Each cell may have identifiable features, such as a nucleus 534, for example. As illustrated, the single-cell selection process 530 may include determining a center 536 of one of the cells 532. In embodiments where multiple cells 532 are included in the image (e.g., the embodiment illustrated in FIG. 5C), the single cell that is selected out of the group of cells 532 may be selected at random. Alternatively, the cell closest to a certain location of the image may be selected (e.g., the top-leftmost cell, the top-rightmost cell, the bottom-leftmost cell, the bottom-rightmost cell, or the cell closest to the center of the image). In other embodiments, a user of a computing device may manually select one of the cells 532.

Determining the center 536 of one of the cells 532 may include determining the location of the nucleus 534 of the respective cell 532. Additionally or alternatively, determining the center 536 of one of the cells 532 may include determining a horizontal center and/or a vertical center of the nucleus 534. Finding the nucleus 534 and/or horizontal and/or vertical centers of the nucleus 534 may include a computing device scanning the image for regions of a specific color and/or shape that corresponds to the shape of the nucleus 534. The color may be defined by a dye that targets the nucleus 534 (e.g., 4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole, DAPI, which targets adenine-thymine pairs within deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA), for example. Determining the location of the nucleus 534 and/or the center 536 of the cell 532 may be completed using a computing device performing alternative image processing techniques in alternate embodiments.

Further, the single-cell selection process 530 may include selecting a region 538 of the image surrounding the center 536 of the nucleus 534. The region may be selected based on a typical shape (e.g., circular, rectangular, or elliptical), size (e.g., 128 pixels by 128 pixels), and/or orientation (e.g., vertical, horizontal, or at a 45 degree angle with respect to the orientation of the image) of biological cells within the image. The typical shape, size, and/or orientation of the biological cells may be based on a predetermined type of cell (e.g., skin cell, blood cell, nerve cell, muscle cell, pluripotent stem cell, etc.) within the image and/or a predetermined expected phenotype of the cell (e.g., healthy phenotype, unhealthy phenotype, etc.) within the image. For example, if the cells in the image were expected to be red blood cells having a healthy phenotype, a size and shape of the selected region 538 may be based on typical sizes and shapes of healthy red blood cells at a magnification level corresponding to the magnification level used to record the image.

The single-cell selection process 530 may select a region that is slightly larger or smaller than a region of the image occupied by one cell (e.g., if the expected size/shape/orientation of the cell does not match the actual size/shape/orientation of the cell being analyzed). For example, the region 538 selected in FIG. 5C encompasses a region slightly larger than the cell 532, thereby also encompassing portions of neighboring cells. Alternatively, in some embodiments, the region selected by the process may intentionally include multiple cells. For example, the shape and size of the region may be based on typical sizes and shapes of regions having multiple cells (e.g., 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 20, etc. cells). Further, the process for selecting a region having multiple cells may include selecting multiple nuclei or finding the horizontal and/or vertical centers of multiple nuclei.

FIG. 5D is an illustration of a single-cell image 540, according to example embodiments. The single-cell image 540 may have been generated by performing the single-cell selection process 530 illustrated in FIG. 5C, for example. Additionally, the single-cell image 540 may be extracted from an unscaled image (e.g., the unscaled image 510 illustrated in FIG. 5A) or a transformed version of an unscaled image (e.g., the scaled image 520 illustrated in FIG. 5B). As illustrated, the single-cell image 540 may include a cell 542 having a nucleus 544. The cell 542 and the nucleus 544 may be scaled or unscaled versions of the cell 532 and the nucleus 534 illustrated in FIG. 5C, for example. Further, the single-cell image 540 may be compared with other single-cell images using a machine-learned, deep metric network model in order to determine phenotypic similarity, in some embodiments.

FIG. 6A is an illustration of a composite scientific image 600, according to example embodiments. The composite scientific image 600 may include one or multiple channels (e.g., 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15, or 20 channels) in various embodiments. The composite scientific image 600 illustrated in FIG. 6A includes a biological cell 601 having multiple organelles. As illustrated, the composite scientific image 600 of the cell 601 includes a golgi body 602, mitochondria 604, a nucleus 606 (e.g., contain DNA), ribosomes 608, and vacuoles 609. In alternate embodiments, the composite scientific image may show additional or alternative regions of the cell (e.g., a nucleolus, a cytoskeleton, a cellular membrane, an endoplasmic reticulum, a vesicle, a lysosome, or a centrosome).

The composite scientific image 600 may be a target image of a target biological cell having a target phenotype, for example. In some embodiments, target images may include pixel data. Additionally or alternatively, target images may include an image identification (ID) and a reference. In alternate embodiments, the composite scientific image 600 may be a candidate image of a candidate biological cell having a candidate phenotype. Candidate images, similarly, may include pixel data and/or an image ID/reference. In some embodiments, the composite scientific image 600 may be a scaled or cropped version of a raw image recorded by a camera. Further, the composite scientific image 600, either as a whole or individually by channel, may be compared to other scientific images using a machine-learned, deep metric network.

Each of the channels may represent different target regions of the cell 601 or different target components of the cell 601, in some embodiments. The channels may be separated based on wavelength. For example, a dye may be used to target different components of the cell 601, and each channel may be recorded by one or more cameras with selective filters that only record light within a given wavelength band, such that only the targeted components emitting light within the given wavelength band may be measured. In alternate embodiments, various channels of the composite scientific image 600 may be distinguished based on other factors. For example, in some embodiments, the composite scientific image may be defined such that the composite scientific image has three channels, with the first channel being a region defined to be the top third of the image, the second channel being a region defined to be the middle third of the image, and the third channel being a region defined to be the bottom third of the image. Other delineations of channels within the composite scientific image are also possible.

FIG. 6B is an illustration of a channel 610 that is part of a scientific image, according to example embodiments. For example, the channel 610 may be a component of the composite scientific image 600 illustrated in FIG. 6A. The channel 610 illustrated in FIG. 6B may only show targeted regions or components of the cell 601 based on a fluorescent compound that is excited by an electromagnetic source, a chemical dye, or a chemiluminescent compound. The targeted regions or components illustrated in FIG. 6B may be those regions that are to be investigated according to a given study, for example. As illustrated, the channel 610 of FIG. 6B shows the nucleus 606 of the cell 601.

Similar to FIG. 6B, FIG. 6C is an illustration of a channel 620 that is part of a scientific image (e.g., the composite scientific image 600 illustrated in FIG. 6A), according to example embodiments. As illustrated, the channel 620 of FIG. 6C shows the mitochondria 604 and the vacuoles 609 of the cell 601.

Similar to FIG. 6B, FIG. 6D is an illustration of a channel 630 that is part of a scientific image (e.g., the composite scientific image 600 illustrated in FIG. 6A), according to example embodiments. As illustrated, the channel 630 of FIG. 6D shows the golgi body 602 and the ribosomes 608 of the cell 601.

FIG. 7 is an illustration of a process 700, according to example embodiments. The process 700 may generate a semantic embedding for a composite scientific image 702, for example, using a machine-learned, deep metric network model. The semantic embedding may then allow the composite scientific image 702 to be compared to other images. The composite scientific image 702 may be a scientific image of one or more cells, for example. Further, the scientific image 702 may be a target image of a target biological cell having a target phenotype or a candidate image of a candidate biological cell having a candidate phenotype, in various embodiments. The composite scientific image 702, as illustrated, may be similar to the composite scientific image 600 illustrated in FIG. 6A (e.g., may be a scaled version of the composite scientific image 600 illustrated in FIG. 6A).

A composite scientific image may include one or more channels (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15, or 20 channels). By way of example, the composite scientific image 702 illustrated in FIG. 7 includes three channels (a first channel 710, a second channel 720, and a third channel 730). Each channel in a composite scientific image may have a given bit depth (e.g., 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, or 128 bit depth). The bit depth of each channel of a composite scientific image may be the same as one another or different, depending on embodiment.

One step in the process 700 of obtaining a semantic embedding (e.g., by a computing device) for the composite scientific image 702 may include separating the channels within the composite scientific image 702. In some embodiments, each of the individual channels from the composite scientific image 702 may be individually stored in volatile and/or non-volatile memory (e.g., in a random access memory, RAM, and/or in a read-only memory, ROM, such as a hard drive).

An additional step of the process 700 of obtaining a semantic embedding for the composite scientific image 702 may include obtaining a semantic embedding for each respective channel 710, 720, 730 of the composite scientific image 702. As illustrated, a first semantic embedding 712 may be obtained that corresponds to the first channel 710, a second semantic embedding 722 may be obtained that corresponds to the second channel 720, and a third semantic embedding 732 may be obtained that corresponds to the third channel 730.

The semantic embeddings obtained for each channel may correspond to semantic embeddings that are interpretable using a machine-learned, deep metric network. For example, each semantic embedding obtained for each channel may include equivalent dimensions to those of the machine-learned, deep metric network that were previously learned using training data (e.g., consumer photographic training data arranged into three-image sets). In addition to including equivalent dimensions (i.e., dimensions defining corresponding image qualities), the semantic embeddings obtained for each channel may include an equivalent number of dimensions to those of the machine-learned, deep metric network model. In some embodiments, the semantic embeddings 712, 722, 732 obtained for each channel may have 16, 32, 64, 96, or 128 dimensions, for example.

In addition, the process 700 of obtaining a semantic embedding for the composite scientific image 702 may include concatenating the first semantic embedding 712, the second semantic embedding 722, and the third semantic embedding 732 into a unified semantic embedding 740. In other embodiments where the composite scientific image 702 includes greater or fewer than three channels, the number of semantic embeddings concatenated to form a unified semantic embedding may vary. Because the unified semantic embedding 740 is a composite of multiple single-channel semantic embeddings, the unified semantic embedding 740 may have additional dimensionality. For example, if each of the single-channel semantic embeddings includes 64 dimensions, the unified semantic embedding 740 may have 192 dimensions (3×64). If instead there were one channel having a single-channel semantic embedding with 64 dimensions, the unified semantic embedding may have 64 dimensions. Further, if there were five channels having single-channel semantic embeddings with 96 dimensions, the unified semantic embedding may have 480 dimensions (5×96), and so on and so forth.

In some embodiments, additional dimensionality reduction may be performed. For example, dimensionality reduction may be performed individually on each of the single-channel semantic embeddings. Additionally or alternatively, dimensionality reduction may be performed on the concatenated semantic embedding. Further, in some embodiments, additional dimensions could be defined by comparing the single-channel semantic embeddings 712, 722, 732 to one another. Such additional dimensions may be used to analyze information based on inter-channel relationships, thus ensuring that such information is not lost.

FIG. 8 is an illustration 800 of anatomical regions of a patient from which candidate biological cells and a target biological cell may be acquired, according to example embodiments. For example, in some embodiments, it may be known that a patient has a disease in one location of their body (e.g., lung cancer). During a biopsy, a sample of cells from the anatomical region with the known disease may be acquired. These cells may thus be indicated to have an unhealthy phenotype and may be indicated to be target biological cells. Also during the biopsy, samples of cells may be acquired from other anatomical regions of the body. For example, samples may also be acquired from the brain, the liver, the large intestine, the heart, the stomach, the kidneys, and the small intestine. Samples may also be taken from other anatomical regions of the body in various embodiments (e.g., the skin to study fibroblasts or the blood to study leukocytes). These additional samples may be labelled as candidate biological cells having candidate phenotypes.

Upon retrieving the target biological cells and the candidate biological cells, a target image and several candidate images may then be recorded. The images may then be compared by a computing device using a machine-learned, deep metric network, in some embodiments. If any of the candidate images have a similarity score with the target image that is above a threshold similarity score, for example, those candidate images may then be determined to correspond to candidate biological cells that have a similar phenotype to the target phenotype (an unhealthy phenotype, for example). This may indicate, as in the example of lung cancer, that the cancer has metastasized to another anatomical region of the patient (e.g., the anatomical region from which the candidate biological cells having a similar phenotype to the target phenotype were acquired). The converse is also possible, in alternate embodiments. For example, an anatomical region of the patient may include target cells that are known to have a healthy phenotype, and a diagnostic may be run (e.g., using a computing device that uses a machine-learned, deep metric network to perform image comparisons) to evaluate whether candidate cells from other anatomical regions also have healthy phenotypes (e.g., if the candidate cells have a similarity score with the target cells that is greater than a threshold similarity score).

In still other embodiments, target cells within certain anatomical regions of the body may be known to exhibit certain mechanisms of action or respond to certain stimuli in certain ways, based on their phenotype. Again, candidate cells in other anatomical regions of the body could be compared and contrasted with the target cells, to establish if their phenotypes are similar to the target phenotype of the target cells.

FIG. 9 is an illustration of a multi-well sample plate 900, according to example embodiments. The multi-well sample plate 900 may include various numbers of rows and columns, in various embodiments. As illustrated in FIG. 9, the multi-well sample plate 900 includes eight rows (row 9A, row 9B, row 9C, row 9D, row 9E, row 9F, row 9G and row 9H) and twelve columns (column 901, column 902, column 903, column 904, column 905, column 906, column 907, column 908, column 909, column 910, column 911, and column 912). Other numbers of rows and/or columns may be used in alternate embodiments. The multi-well sample plate 900 may be loaded with various samples in various wells in order to generate data analyzable using a computing device that uses a machine-learned, deep metric network model, for example.

In one embodiment, one subset of the wells of the multi-well sample plate 900 (e.g., row 9G) may be loaded with biological cells from a negative control group. This group of cells may be equivalent to a group of candidate biological cells initially, but may not receive any treatment. Another subset of the wells of the multi-well sample plate 900 (e.g., row 9H) may be loaded with target biological cells having a known target phenotype (e.g., a healthy phenotype). The remaining rows of wells of the multi-well sample plate 900 may be loaded with candidate biological cells.

The candidate biological cells may be known to initially have a given phenotype (e.g., an unhealthy phenotype). Thereafter, the candidate biological cells may be treated with various candidate treatment compounds at various concentrations. For example, all candidate biological cells in row 9A may be treated with candidate treated compound one, all candidate biological cells in row 9B may be treated with candidate treatment compound two, all candidate biological cells in row 9C may be treated with candidate treatment compound three, and so on. In addition, all candidate biological cells in column 901 (excluding the negative control biological cells and target biological cells in column 901, row 9G and column 901, row 9H, respectively) may be treated with the respective candidate treatment compound of their row at a concentration of 0.1 molar. Similarly, all candidate biological cells in column 902 may be treated with the respective candidate treatment compound of their row at a concentration of 0.2 molar, and so on for the rest of the columns through 1.2 molar.

As an example, row 9C may be treated with candidate treatment compound three in concentrations of 0.1 molar in column 901, 0.2 molar in column 902, 0.3 molar in column 903, 0.4 molar in column 904, 0.5 molar in column 905, 0.6 molar in column 906, 0.7 molar in column 907, 0.8 molar in column 908, 0.9 molar in column 909, 1.0 molar in column 910, 1.1 molar in column 911, and 1.2 molar in column 912. As an additional example, column 905 may be treated with concentrations of 0.5 molar using candidate treatment compound one in row 9A, candidate treatment compound two in row 9B, candidate treatment compound three in row 9C, candidate treatment compound four in row 9D, candidate treatment compound five in row 9E, and candidate treatment compound six in row 9F.

Negative control images of the negative control group biological cells, target images of the target biological cells, and candidate images of the candidate biological cells may then be recorded of the biological cells from the different wells of the multi-well sample plate 900. The negative control images, the candidate images, and the target images may then be compared to one another (e.g., by a computing device using a machine-learned, deep metric network model).

In other embodiments, other delineations may be drawn between samples within different wells of the multi-well sample plate 900. For example, in some embodiments, negative control group samples, candidate samples, or target samples may correspond to various healthy phenotype(s), various unhealthy phenotype(s), various candidate compounds, various candidate compound concentrations, various candidate treatment durations, various anatomical regions of a single patient, a common anatomical region across various patients, various anatomical regions across various patients, various mechanisms of action (e.g., analyzed by providing specific wells of the multi-well sample plate 900 with various inhibitors), and/or various compounds for illuminating specific cellular regions (e.g., fluorescent compounds, chemical dyes, or chemiluminescent compounds). Other candidate variations for similarity study among various cells are also possible.

FIG. 10 is an illustration of a method 1000, according to example embodiments. In some embodiments, each block may represent a module, a segment, or a portion of program code, which includes one or more instructions executable by a processor or computing device for implementing specific logical operations or steps. The program code may be stored on any type of computer-readable medium, such as a storage device included in a disk or hard drive. The computer-readable medium may include volatile memory, such as a register memory, a processor cache, and/or a RAM. Additionally or alternatively, the computer-readable medium may include non-volatile memory, such as secondary or persistent long-term storage, like ROM, optical or magnetic disks, and compact-disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), for example. In addition, one or more blocks in FIG. 10 may represent circuitry that is wired to perform the specific logical operations.

In some embodiments, the method 1000 may include additional blocks occurring before, in between, or after the blocks illustrated in FIG. 10. Further, in some embodiments, one or more of the blocks illustrated in FIG. 10 may be repeated one or more times. In alternate embodiments, the order of various blocks within the method may be rearranged without departing from the scope of the method.

At block 1002, the method 1000 includes receiving, by a computing device, a target image of a target biological cell having a target phenotype. The target image may include image data (e.g., the pixel values used to generate the image) and/or a reference value associated with a location of an associated semantic embedding (e.g., a memory address associated with the associated semantic embedding). The target image may have been recorded by a camera, for example. Further, in some embodiments, the camera may have one or more associated optical filters configured to allow the transmission of only a range of wavelengths to the camera. Additionally, the camera may transmit the target image to the computing device. For example, the camera may communicate with the computing device over WiFi (IEEE 802.11 standards), over Bluetooth®, or via wireline interface (e.g., a universal serial bus, USB, cable).

In alternate embodiments, the computing device may receive the target image through communication with another computing device. For example, the computing device may receive the target image from a mobile computing device (e.g., a mobile phone equipped with a camera that recorded the target image), a tablet computing device, or a personal computing device (e.g., a laptop computing device). The computing device may receive the target image via an application (app) or through electronic mail (email), in various embodiments.

In some embodiments, the target image received by the computing device may be accompanied by target image metadata. For example, the target image metadata may include when the target image was recorded, the number of channels in the target image, the bit-depth of each channel in the target image, to which wavelength ranges or cellular components each channel in the target image corresponds, a predetermined target phenotype associated with the target cells in the target image, a treatment regimen provided to the target cells in the target image, the mechanisms of action occurring in the target cells of the target image, a row of a multi-well sample plate from which the target image was recorded, a column of a multi-well sample plate from which the target image was recorded, or an anatomical region of a patient from which the target cells in the target image were acquired.

At block 1004, the method 1000 includes obtaining, by the computing device, a semantic embedding associated with the target image. The semantic embedding associated with the target image may be generated using a machine-learned, deep metric network model. The machine-learned, deep metric network model may have been previously trained using consumer photographic training data. For example, the consumer photographic training data may include three-image sets (e.g., similar to the three-image set illustrated in FIG. 1). The three-image sets may be based upon internet search results and selections (e.g., by internet users). The internet search results and selections may allow the computing device to train the machine-learned, deep metric network model to identify similarities and differences between images. In some embodiments, particular features of images will be separated into dimensions (e.g., 64 dimensions) of the semantic embedding during the training of the machine-learned, deep metric network.

Further, in some embodiments, obtaining the semantic embedding associated with the target image may include a similar process to the process illustrated in FIG. 7. For example, obtaining the semantic embedding associated with the target image may include retrieving the channels of the target image, obtaining a semantic embedding for each channel of the target image, and concatenating each channel of the target image into a single semantic embedding. In some embodiments, each of the channels may correspond to a predetermined range of wavelengths detectable by one or more cameras (e.g., to investigate one or more regions of the target biological cell). The concatenated semantic embedding may have more dimensions than the single-channel semantic embeddings (e.g., 192 dimensions for a concatenated semantic embedding of a target image having three channels, each channel having a 64 dimension single-channel semantic embedding).

In alternate embodiments, alternate processes of obtaining a semantic embedding associated with the target image may additionally or alternatively be used. For example, an autoencoder may generate a semantic embedding associated with the target image. In other embodiments, a classification model other than the machine-learned, deep metric network model may be used to obtain the semantic embedding. For example, an output or a hidden layer of another artificial neural network may generate the semantic embedding for the target image. In still other embodiments, variations of the machine-learned, deep metric network model trained on three-image sets may be used to obtain the semantic embedding of the target image. For example, the machine-learned, deep metric network model may be trained with images that more closely resemble the target image and the candidate images (e.g., the model is not trained on consumer photographic query results), such as only scientific images or only images of biological cells.

At block 1006, the method 1000 includes obtaining, by the computing device for each of a plurality of candidate images of candidate biological cells (e.g., each corresponding to a candidate mechanism of action) each having a respective candidate phenotype, a semantic embedding associated with the respective candidate image. The candidate images may include image data (e.g., the pixel values used to generate the image) and/or a reference value associated with a location of an associated semantic embedding (e.g., a memory address associated with the associated semantic embedding). Analogous to block 1002, the candidate images may have been recorded by a camera. Likewise, in some embodiments, the camera may have one or more associated optical filters configured to allow the transmission of only a range of wavelengths to the camera. Additionally, the camera may transmit the candidate images to the computing device. For example, the camera may communicate with the computing device over WiFi, over Bluetooth®, or via wireline interface (e.g., a USB cable).

In alternate embodiments, the computing device may receive the candidate images through communication with another computing device. For example, the computing device may receive the candidate images from a mobile computing device (e.g., a mobile phone equipped with a camera that recorded the candidate image), a tablet computing device, or a personal computing device (e.g., a laptop computing device). The computing device may receive the candidate images via an app or through email, in various embodiments.

In some embodiments, the candidate images received by the computing device may be accompanied by candidate image metadata. For example, the candidate image metadata may include when the candidate images were recorded, the number of channels in the candidate images, the bit-depth of each channel in the candidate images, to which wavelength ranges or cellular components each channel in the candidate images corresponds, treatment regimens provided to the candidate cells in the candidate images, the mechanisms of action occurring in the candidate cells of the candidate images, a row of a multi-well sample plate from which the candidate images were recorded, a column of a multi-well sample plate from which the candidate images were recorded, or an anatomical region of a patient from which the candidate cells in the candidate images were acquired.

Similar to block 1004, the semantic embeddings associated with the candidate images may be generated using a machine-learned, deep metric network model. The machine-learned, deep metric network model may be the same model as in block 1004 (i.e., may have been previously trained using consumer photographic training data). Also similar to block 1004, in some embodiments, obtaining the semantic embeddings associated with the candidate images may include a similar process to the process illustrated in FIG. 7. Also similar to block 1004, alternate processes of obtaining the semantic embeddings associated with the respective candidate images may be used (e.g., semantic embeddings generated by an autoencoder or semantic embeddings obtained using a variation on the machine-learned, deep metric network model).

At block 1008, the method 1000 includes determining, by the computing device, a similarity score for each candidate image. Determining the similarity score for a respective candidate image includes computing, by the computing device, a vector distance in a multi-dimensional space described by the semantic embeddings between the respective candidate image and the target image. The similarity score for each candidate image represents a degree of similarity between the target phenotype and the respective candidate phenotype.

In some embodiments, the method 1000 may also include training the machine-learned, deep metric network model. Training the machine-learned, deep metric network model may include receiving, by the computing device, a series of three-image sets as training data. Each three-image set may include a query image, a positive image, and a negative image. The query image, the positive image, and the negative image may be photographic internet search results ranked in comparison with another based on selections by internet users, for example. In addition, based on the selections by internet users, it is determined (e.g., by the computing device) that a similarity between the query image and the positive image is greater than a similarity between the query image and the negative image. The method 1000 may additionally include refining, by the computing device, the machine-learned, deep metric network model based on each three-image set to account for image components of the query image, the positive image, and/or the negative image.

Further, in some embodiments, the method 1000 may include receiving, by the computing device, a plurality of control group images of control group biological cells having control group phenotypes. In such embodiments, the method 1000 may also include obtaining, by the computing device for each control group image, a semantic embedding associated with the respective control group image. Further, in such embodiments, the method 1000 may also include normalizing, by the computing device, the semantic embeddings associated with the candidate images. Normalizing may include computing, by the computing device, eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a covariance matrix defined by the values of each dimension of the semantic embeddings associated with the control group images using principal component analysis. Normalizing may also include scaling, by the computing device, values of each dimension of the semantic embeddings associated with the control group images by a respective dimensional scaling factor such that each dimension is zero-centered and has unit variance. Further, normalization may include scaling, by the computing device, values of each corresponding dimension of the semantic embeddings associated with the candidate images by the respective dimensional scaling factor. Such normalization of the semantic embeddings associated with the candidate images may negate an influence of common morphological variations (e.g., variations in cellular size, in nuclear size, in cellular shape, in nuclear shape, in nuclear color, in nuclear size relative to cellular size, or in nuclear location within a respective cell) among the candidate biological cells on the similarity scores. In some embodiments, normalizing may further include shifting, by the computing device, values of each corresponding dimension of the semantic embeddings associated with the candidate images by a dimensional shifting factor.

Even further, in some embodiments, the method 1000 may include additional analysis of the similarity scores. As described with respect to FIGS. 4C and 4F, the similarity scores may be ranked to determine which candidate image has the greatest similarity score (i.e., the maximum similarity score) among the candidate images. The candidate image with the greatest similarity score may be determined to be most similar to the target image. Thus, the candidate image with the greatest similarity score may be determined to correspond to a candidate biological cell that has a candidate phenotype that is most similar to the target phenotype of the target biological cell associated with the target image. In some embodiments (e.g., where the target phenotype is a healthy phenotype), the method 1000 may also include determining, by the computing device, a treatment regimen for a patient based on the candidate biological cell having the candidate phenotype that is most similar to the target phenotype. The treatment regimen determined may be a treatment regimen applied to the candidate biological cell corresponding to the greatest similarity score, for example.

Additionally or alternatively, the similarity scores may be compared to a single threshold similarity score to determine which of the corresponding candidate images exhibits a threshold level of similarity with the target image (e.g., those similarity scores that are greater than or equal to the threshold similarity score exhibit the threshold level of similarity with the target image). In still other embodiments, the similarity scores may be grouped into multiple groups of candidate images based on multiple threshold similarity scores (e.g., defined such that each group of candidate images has the same number of candidate images in the group or defined such that certain sets of similarity characteristics between the candidate images and the target image are minimally shared by all members of a group). The candidate images may additionally be group in other ways based on their semantic embeddings that do not include the calculation of a similarity score with the target image. For example, all candidate images having a value of dimension Z₁ that is greater than ϵ may be put into a group. In this way, candidate images having a given characteristic may be placed into a common group, even if those candidate images do not have comparable similarity scores with one another.

In alternate embodiments, the method 1000 may also include scaling, by the computing device, the target image and each of the candidate images such that an image size of the target image and image sizes of each of the candidate images match an image size (e.g., a standardized size) interpretable using the machine-learned, deep metric network model. Scaling the target image and each of the candidate images may include determining, by the computing device, a location of a cellular nucleus within the respective image. Scaling the target image may also include cropping, by the computing device, the respective image based on a rectangular box centered on the cellular nucleus.

FIG. 11 is an illustration of a method 1100, according to example embodiments. In some embodiments, various blocks may represent a module, a segment, or a portion of program code, which includes one or more instructions executable by a processor or computing device for implementing specific logical operations or steps. The program code may be stored on any type of computer-readable medium, such as a storage device included in a disk or hard drive. The computer-readable medium may include volatile memory, such as a register memory, a processor cache, and/or a RAM. Additionally or alternatively, the computer-readable medium may include non-volatile memory, such as secondary or persistent long-term storage, like ROM, optical or magnetic disks, and CD-ROM, for example. In addition, one or more blocks in FIG. 11 may represent circuitry that is wired to perform the specific logical operations.

In some embodiments, the method 1100 may include additional blocks occurring before, in between, or after the blocks illustrated in FIG. 11. Further, in some embodiments, one or more of the blocks illustrated in FIG. 11 may be repeated one or more times. In alternate embodiments, the order of various blocks within the method may be rearranged without departing from the scope of the method.

At block 1102, the method 1100 includes preparing a multi-well sample plate with a target biological cell having a target phenotype (e.g., a healthy phenotype) and candidate biological cells. Preparing the multi-well sample plate may include loading specific numbers, concentrations, or volume of target biological cells and/or candidate biological cells into wells of the multi-well sample plate. This may include apportioning aliquots of a target sample and/or of a candidate sample into wells of the multi-well sample plate. Further, preparing the multi-well sample plate may include loading the target biological cell(s) and the candidate biological cell(s) into specified wells of the multi-well sample plate. For example, the target biological cell(s) may be loaded into all wells occupying a first column of the multi-well sample plate. Additionally, the candidate biological cell(s) may be loaded into all wells occupying the remaining columns of the multi-well sample plate. Other loading schemata are also possible in various embodiments.

The multi-well sample plate may be a microtiter plate, in some example embodiments. The multi-well sample plate may also have a variety of numbers of wells in various embodiments. For example, the multi-well sample plate may have 8, 16, 24, 64, 96, 384, or 1536 wells, in various embodiments. Other numbers of wells are also possible. In some embodiments, other containers may be used to hold the samples (e.g., the target biological cells and/or the candidate biological cells). For example, in some embodiments, the samples may be held in centrifuge tubes, beakers, test tubes, petri dishes, vials, flasks, graduated cylinders, burets, and/or microscope slides. Alternative sample containers are also possible in various embodiments.

At block 1104, the method 1100 includes applying a variety of candidate treatment regimens to each of the candidate biological cells. Applying the candidate treatment regimens may include applying any superposition of various candidate treatment compounds, various candidate treatment concentrations, various candidate treatment durations, or various candidate treatment conditions (e.g., temperatures) to various candidate biological cells. In some embodiments, the various candidate treatment regimens may be separated by location on the multi-well sample plate. For example, candidate biological cells in a first row on a multi-well sample plate may be treated with a first candidate treatment compound and candidate biological cells in a second row on the multi-well sample plate may be treated with a second candidate treatment compound. Other alternative treatment arrangements, such as those described with respect to FIG. 9, are also possible.

At block 1106, the method 1100 includes recording a target image of the target biological cell. Recording the target image may include using a camera or a CCD to record an image of a well, or wells, of the multi-well sample plate containing target biological cells. Further, in some embodiments, the camera may have one or more associated optical filters configured to allow the transmission of only a range of wavelengths to the camera. In some embodiments, recording the target image may include storing the target image within a memory (e.g., a non-volatile memory, such as an external hard drive or a secure digital, SD, card).

At block 1108, the method 1100 includes recording candidate images of each of the candidate biological cells, each having a respective candidate phenotype arising in response to the candidate treatment regimen being applied. One or more of the candidate phenotypes may be different from a phenotype exhibited by the respective candidate biological cell prior to treatment. For example, a candidate biological cell may have initially exhibited an unhealthy phenotype, but after treatment using a candidate treatment regimen has a candidate phenotype closer to a healthy phenotype.

Similar to block 1106, recording the images of each of the candidate biological cells may include using a camera or a CCD to record an image of a well, or wells, of the multi-well sample plate containing candidate biological cells. Further, in some embodiments, the camera may have one or more associated optical filters configured to allow the transmission of only a range of wavelengths to the camera. Also, recording the candidate image may include storing the candidate image within a memory.

At block 1110, the method 1100 includes receiving, by the computing device, the target image and the candidate images. The target image or the candidate images may be transmitted directly from a camera to the computing device, in some embodiments (e.g., over WiFi, over Bluetooth®, or via a USB cable).

In alternate embodiments, the computing device may receive the target image and/or the candidate images through communication with another computing device. For example, the computing device may receive the target image and/or the candidate images from a mobile computing device (e.g., a mobile phone equipped with a camera that recorded the target image or the candidate images), a tablet computing device, or a personal computing device (e.g., a laptop computing device). The images may be received by the computing device via transmission using the public Internet, in some embodiments. The computing device may receive the target image or the candidate images via an app or through email, in various embodiments.

In some embodiments, one or more of the images received by the computing device may be accompanied by image metadata. For example, image metadata may include when the image was recorded, the number of channels in the image, the bit-depth of each channel in the image, to which wavelength ranges or cellular components each channel in the image corresponds, a predetermined phenotype associated with the cells in the image, a treatment regimen provided to the cells in the target image, the mechanisms of action occurring in the cells of the target image, a row of a multi-well sample plate from which the image was recorded, a column of a multi-well sample plate from which the image was recorded, or an anatomical region of a patient from which the cells in the image were acquired.

At block 1112, the method 1100 includes obtaining, by the computing device, a semantic embedding associated with the target image. Likewise, at block 1114, the method 1100 includes obtaining, by the computing device for each candidate image, a semantic embedding associated with the respective candidate image. The semantic embeddings associated with the target image or a respective candidate image may be generated using a machine-learned, deep metric network model. The machine-learned, deep metric network model may have been previously trained using consumer photographic training data. For example, the consumer photographic training data may include three-image sets (e.g., similar to the three-image set illustrated in FIG. 1). The three-image sets may be based upon internet search results and selections (e.g., by internet users). The internet search results and selections may allow the computing device to train the machine-learned, deep metric network model to identify similarities and differences between images. In some embodiments, particular features of images will be separated into dimensions (e.g., 64 dimensions) of the semantic embedding during the training of the machine-learned, deep metric network.

Further, in some embodiments, obtaining the semantic embedding associated with the target image or the respective candidate image may include a similar process to the process illustrated in FIG. 7. For example, obtaining the semantic embedding associated with the target image may include separating the channels of the target image, obtaining a semantic embedding for each channel of the target image, and concatenating each channel of the target image into a single semantic embedding. The concatenated semantic embedding may have more dimensions than the single-channel semantic embeddings (e.g., 192 dimensions for a concatenated semantic embedding of a candidate image having three channels, each channel having a 64 dimension single-channel semantic embedding).

At block 1116, the method 1100 includes determining, by the computing device, a similarity score for each candidate image. Determining the similarity score for a respective candidate image includes computing, by the computing device, a vector distance in a multi-dimensional space described by the semantic embeddings between the respective candidate image and the target image. The similarity score for each candidate image represents a degree of similarity between the target phenotype and the respective candidate phenotype. Similar to method 1000 of FIG. 10, in some embodiments, the method 1100 may include further analysis of the similarity scores.

At block 1118, the method 1100 includes selecting, by the computing device, a preferred treatment regimen among a variety of candidate treatment regimens based on the similarity scores. For example, the candidate image having the similarity score with the largest value (or, in some embodiments, the smallest value) may be selected. The candidate image having the similarity score with the largest value may correspond to a candidate biological cell that has a candidate phenotype that is most similar to the target phenotype. If, for example, the target phenotype is healthy, and the candidate biological cells were unhealthy, the resulting greatest similarity score may correspond to a biological cell that received a candidate treatment regimen that made the cell closest to a healthy phenotype among the candidate biological cells. In another example, if the target phenotype was an unhealthy phenotype, the candidate image having the lowest similarity score may be selected, which would then correspond to a preferred treatment regimen which yields a candidate phenotype that is most dissimilar from the target phenotype.

In alternate embodiments, the method 1100 may include additional blocks. In some embodiments, for example, the method 1100 may additionally include administering the preferred treatment regimen to a patient. Administering the preferred treatment regimen to the patient may include providing an anatomical region of a patient with a treatment compound at a given concentration and/or for a given duration. The treatment compound, concentration, and/or duration may correspond to the treatment compound, concentration, and/or duration applied to the candidate biological cells in block 1104 that ultimately corresponded to the candidate image with the highest similarity score, as determined in block 1116.

III. EXAMPLE SYSTEMS

FIG. 12 is an illustration of a system 1200, according to example embodiments. The system 1200 may include a camera 1210, a multi-well sample plate 1220, a computing device 1230 (including a processor 1240 and a memory 1250), and a server 1260. The multi-well plate 1220 may include multiple wells 1222. Further, the multi-well sample plate 1220 may be analogous to the multi-well sample plate 900 illustrated in FIG. 9.

The camera 1210 may include one or more image sensors (e.g., CCDs). The camera 1210 may also include a lens 1212 and one or more optical filters 1214. The optical filter may only pass light through to the lens 1212 within a certain wavelength range. The wavelength range may correspond to one or more targeted regions of one or more biological cells within one or more plates 1222 in the multi-well sample plate 1220. For example, a nucleus of the biological cells within one of the sample plates may be dyed using a dye of a particular color. The optical filter 1214 may then permit only wavelengths corresponding to the dye to pass to the lens 1212 of the camera 1210. In this way, only those regions of the biological cell being targeted may be recorded by the camera 1210, thereby reducing noise or unnecessary image content.

In another example embodiment, certain cellular organelles may be targeted by one or more fluorophores. The fluorophores may emit light within a first specific wavelength range when excited by radiation within a second wavelength range. Thus, in such embodiments, the system 1200 may additionally include an excitation source (e.g., a laser) that emits light within the second wavelength range to excite the fluorophores.

In some embodiments, multiple optical filters 1214 may be cascaded to absorb and/or reflect light of various wavelength ranges. Additionally or alternately, the optical filter 1214 may be interchangeable. For example, as the camera 1210 is scanned over various wells 1222 of the multi-well sample plate 1220, the optical filter 1214 may be removed or swapped for various alternate optical filters (e.g., to analyze various targeted regions within various wells 1222 corresponding to various wavelength ranges).

As illustrated, the camera 1210 is communicatively coupled to the computing device 1230. Such a communicative coupling may be implemented using WiFi, over Bluetooth®, or via wireline interface (e.g., a USB cable), in various embodiments. Alternatively, in some embodiments, the camera 1210 may be coupled to the computing device 1230 over the public Internet. For example, the camera 1210 may be a camera attached to or integrated in a mobile computing device (e.g., a cellular phone). The mobile computing device may access the public Internet to transmit images (e.g., candidate images or target images of biological cells) to the computing device 1230. In some embodiments, the camera 1210 may additionally or alternatively be communicatively coupled to the server 1260. For example, in some embodiments, the camera 1210 may transmit images to the server 1260, the server 1260 may perform image processing (e.g., a creation of semantic embeddings using a machine-learned, deep metric network model and a comparison of the semantic embeddings to obtain similarity scores), and the server 1260 may then transmit the resulting similarity scores to the computing device 1230.

The computing device 1230, as illustrated, includes a processor 1240 and a memory 1250. The memory 1250 includes instructions 1252 stored thereon. The memory 1250 may include volatile memory (e.g., RAM) and/or non-volatile memory (e.g., a hard drive). The memory 1250 may also be internally communicatively coupled to the processor 1240 (e.g., over a system bus). The processor 1240 may be configured to execute the instructions 1252 stored in the memory 1250 (e.g., to perform various computing tasks). Additionally or alternatively, the memory 1250 may store images (e.g., recorded by the camera 1210) and semantic embeddings associated with the images. The memory 1250 may further store a machine-learned, deep metric network model used to generate semantic embeddings from images.

The computing device 1230, as illustrated, may also be communicatively coupled to the server 1260 (e.g., over the public Internet). In some embodiments, the server 1260 (alternative to or in addition to the memory 1250) may store the machine-learned, deep metric network model used to generate semantic embeddings. In such embodiments, the machine-learned, deep metric network model may be accessed by the computing device 1230 in order for the processor 1240 to generate semantic embeddings. Further, the server 1260 may store semantic embeddings generated from images (e.g., target images or candidate images). Such semantic embeddings may be generated by the server 1260, itself, or by the processor 1240 using the machine-learned, deep metric network model. The semantic embeddings may be transmitted from the server 1260 to the computing device 1230 such that the processor 1240 can perform comparisons of the semantic embeddings to obtain similarity scores. The server 1260 may also store similarity scores from previous image comparisons (e.g., comparisons performed by the processor 1240).

IV CONCLUSION

The above detailed description describes various features and functions of the disclosed systems, devices, and methods with reference to the accompanying figures. While various aspects and embodiments have been disclosed herein, other aspects and embodiments will be apparent. The various aspects and embodiments disclosed herein are for purposes of illustration only and are not intended to be limiting, with the true scope being indicated by the following claims.

The present disclosure is not to be limited in terms of the particular embodiments described in this application, which are intended as illustrations of various aspects. Many modifications and variations can be made without departing from its spirit and scope, as will be apparent to those skilled in the art. Functionally equivalent methods and apparatuses within the scope of the disclosure, in addition to those enumerated herein, will be apparent to those skilled in the art from the foregoing descriptions. Such modifications and variations are intended to fall within the scope of the appended claims.

The above detailed description describes various features and functions of the disclosed systems, devices, and methods with reference to the accompanying figures. In the figures, similar symbols typically identify similar components, unless context dictates otherwise. The example embodiments described herein and in the figures are not meant to be limiting. Other embodiments can be used, and other changes can be made, without departing from the scope of the subject matter presented herein. It will be readily understood that the aspects of the present disclosure, as generally described herein, and illustrated in the figures, can be arranged, substituted, combined, separated, and designed in a wide variety of different configurations, all of which are explicitly contemplated herein.

The particular arrangements shown in the figures should not be viewed as limiting. It should be understood that other embodiments can include more or less of each element shown in a given figure. Further, some of the illustrated elements can be combined or omitted. Yet further, an example embodiment can include elements that are not illustrated in the figures.

While various aspects and embodiments have been disclosed herein, other aspects and embodiments will be apparent to those skilled in the art. The various aspects and embodiments disclosed herein are for purposes of illustration and are not intended to be limiting, with the true scope being indicated by the following claims. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A method, comprising: receiving, by a computing device, a target image of a target biological cell having a target phenotype; obtaining, by the computing device, a semantic embedding associated with the target image, wherein the semantic embedding associated with the target image is generated using a machine-learned, deep metric network model; obtaining, by the computing device for each of a plurality of candidate images of candidate biological cells each having a respective candidate phenotype, a semantic embedding associated with the respective candidate image, wherein the semantic embedding associated with the respective candidate image is generated using the machine-learned, deep metric network model; determining, by the computing device, a similarity score for each candidate image, wherein determining the similarity score for a respective candidate image comprises computing, by the computing device, a vector distance in a multi-dimensional space described by the semantic embeddings between the respective candidate image and the target image, and wherein the similarity score for each candidate image represents a degree of similarity between the target phenotype and the respective candidate phenotype; determining, by the computing device, a threshold similarity score; and determining, by the computing device, those candidate images having similarity scores that satisfy the threshold similarity score, wherein the target phenotype is a healthy phenotype, wherein the candidate images having similarity scores that satisfy the threshold similarity score have respective candidate phenotypes corresponding to the healthy phenotype, and wherein those candidate images having similarity scores that do not satisfy the threshold similarity score have respective candidate phenotypes corresponding to an unhealthy phenotype.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the machine-learned, deep metric network model was trained using a plurality of photographic images as training data, wherein the photographic images are query results ranked based on selections, and wherein rankings of the photographic images are used in the training of the machine-learned, deep metric network model to determine image similarity between two images.
 3. The method of claim 1, further comprising training the machine-learned, deep metric network model, wherein training the machine-learned, deep metric network model comprises: receiving, by the computing device, a series of three-image sets as training data, wherein each three-image set comprises a query image, a positive image, and a negative image, wherein the query image, the positive image, and the negative image are query results ranked in comparison with one another based on selections, and wherein the selections indicate that a similarity between the query image and the positive image is greater than a similarity between the query image and the negative image; and refining, by the computing device, the machine-learned, deep metric network model based on each three-image set to account for image components of the query image, the positive image, and the negative image.
 4. The method of claim 1, further comprising training the machine-learned, deep metric network model using unsupervised learning.
 5. The method of claim 1, further comprising: determining, by the computing device, a second threshold similarity score; and determining, by the computing device, those candidate images having similarity scores that satisfy the second threshold similarity score and do not satisfy the threshold similarity score, wherein the candidate images having similarity scores that satisfy the second threshold similarity score and do not satisfy the threshold similarity score have respective candidate phenotypes corresponding to a first disease state, wherein the candidate images having similarity scores that do not satisfy the second threshold similarity score have respective candidate phenotypes corresponding to a second disease state, and wherein the first disease state and the second disease state correspond to the unhealthy phenotype.
 6. The method of claim 1, further comprising: receiving, by the computing device, a second target image of a second target biological cell having a second target phenotype; obtaining, by the computing device, a semantic embedding associated with the second target image, wherein the semantic embedding associated with the second target image is generated using the machine-learned, deep metric network model; determining, by the computing device, a second similarity score for each candidate image, wherein determining the second similarity score for a respective candidate image comprises computing, by the computing device, a vector distance in the multi-dimensional space described by the semantic embeddings between the respective candidate image and the second target image, and wherein the second similarity score for each candidate image represents a degree of similarity between the second target phenotype and the respective candidate phenotype; determining, by the computing device, a second threshold similarity score; and determining, by the computing device, those candidate images having second similarity scores that satisfy the second threshold similarity score, wherein the second target phenotype is a second unhealthy phenotype, wherein the candidate images having second similarity scores that satisfy the second threshold similarity score have respective candidate phenotypes corresponding to the second unhealthy phenotype, and wherein those candidate images having second similarity scores that do not satisfy the second threshold similarity score have respective candidate phenotypes that do not correspond to the second unhealthy phenotype.
 7. The method of claim 1, further comprising: determining, by the computing device, a maximum similarity score among all of the candidate images, wherein the maximum similarity score corresponds to a candidate image of a candidate biological cell having a candidate phenotype that is most similar to the target phenotype.
 8. The method of claim 7, further comprising: determining, by the computing device, a treatment regimen for a patient based on the candidate biological cell having the candidate phenotype that is most similar to the target phenotype.
 9. The method of claim 1, further comprising: obtaining, by the computing device for each of a plurality of control group images of control group biological cells having control group phenotypes, a semantic embedding associated with the respective control group image, wherein the semantic embedding associated with the respective control group image is generated using the machine-learned, deep metric network model; and normalizing, by the computing device, the semantic embeddings associated with the candidate images, wherein normalizing comprises: computing, by the computing device, eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a covariance matrix defined by values of each dimension of the semantic embeddings associated with the control group images using principal component analysis; scaling, by the computing device, the values of each dimension of the semantic embeddings associated with the control group images by a respective dimensional scaling factor such that each dimension is zero-centered and has unit variance; and scaling, by the computing device, the values of each corresponding dimension of the semantic embeddings associated with the candidate images by the respective dimensional scaling factor.
 10. The method of claim 9, wherein normalizing, by the computing device, the semantic embeddings associated with the candidate images negates an influence of common morphological variations among the candidate biological cells on the similarity scores.
 11. The method of claim 10, wherein the common morphological variations among the candidate biological cells comprise variations in cellular size, variations in nuclear size, variations in cellular shape, variations in nuclear shape, variations in nuclear color, variations in nuclear size relative to cellular size, or variations in nuclear location within a respective cell.
 12. The method of claim 1, further comprising: obtaining the candidate biological cells, wherein the candidate biological cells initially exhibit unhealthy phenotypes; treating the candidate biological cells with various concentrations of various candidate treatment compounds; recording the candidate images of the candidate biological cells; and transmitting the plurality candidate images to the computing device.
 13. The method of claim 1, wherein the target biological cell was acquired from a first anatomical region of a patient during a biopsy, and wherein the candidate biological cells comprise biological cells acquired from anatomical regions of the patient during the biopsy other than the first anatomical region.
 14. The method of claim 1, wherein the semantic embedding associated with the target image and the semantic embeddings associated with the candidate images comprise 64-dimensional embeddings for each channel of a corresponding image.
 15. The method of claim 1, further comprising: scaling, by the computing device, the target image and each of the candidate images such that an image size of the target image and images sizes of each of the candidate images match an image size interpretable using the machine-learned, deep metric network model.
 16. The method of claim 15, wherein scaling the target image and each of the candidate images comprises, for each respective image: determining, by the computing device, a location of a cellular nucleus within the respective image; and cropping, by the computing device, the respective image based on a rectangular box centered on the cellular nucleus.
 17. The method of claim 1, wherein obtaining the semantic embedding associated with the target image or one of the respective candidate images comprises: retrieving, by the computing device, each channel of a respective image; obtaining, by the computing device, a semantic embedding for each channel of the respective image, wherein the semantic embedding for each channel of the respective image is generated using the machine-learned, deep metric network model; and concatenating, by the computing device, the semantic embeddings for each channel of the respective image into a single semantic embedding.
 18. The method of claim 17, wherein each channel in the target image and each of the candidate images corresponds to a predetermined range of wavelengths detectable by one or more cameras, each having one or more associated optical filters, wherein each of the one or more cameras is configured to record the target image or at least one of the plurality of candidate images, and wherein one or more investigated regions of the target biological cell or the candidate biological cells emit light within the predetermined ranges of wavelengths.
 19. The method of claim 18, wherein the one or more investigated regions of the target biological cell or the candidate biological cells emit light within the predetermined ranges of wavelengths due to a fluorescent compound that targets the one or more investigated regions and is excited by an electromagnetic excitation source, a chemical dye that targets the one or more investigated regions, or a chemiluminescent compound that targets the one or more investigated regions.
 20. The method of claim 18, wherein the one or more investigated regions correspond to a location of a nucleus, a nucleolus, a cytoskeleton, a mitochondrion, a cellular membrane, an endoplasmic reticulum, a golgi body, a ribosome, a vesicle, a vacuole, a lysosome, or a centrosome within the target biological cell or the candidate biological cells.
 21. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of candidate cells each correspond to a candidate mechanism of action.
 22. The method of claim 1, wherein obtaining, by the computing device, the semantic embedding associated with the target image comprises generating, by an autoencoder, the semantic embedding associated with the target image, and wherein obtaining, by the computing device for each candidate image, the semantic embedding associated with the respective candidate image comprises generating, by the autoencoder for each candidate image, the semantic embedding associated with the respective candidate image.
 23. A non-transitory, computer-readable medium having instructions stored thereon, wherein the instructions, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to execute a method, comprising: receiving, by the processor, a target image of a target biological cell having a target phenotype; obtaining, by the processor, a semantic embedding associated with the target image, wherein the semantic embedding associated with the target image is generated using a machine-learned, deep metric network model; obtaining, by the processor for each of a plurality of candidate images of candidate biological cells each having a respective candidate phenotype, a semantic embedding associated with the respective candidate image, wherein the semantic embedding associated with the respective candidate image is generated using the machine-learned, deep metric network model; determining, by the processor, a similarity score for each candidate image, wherein determining the similarity score for a respective candidate image comprises computing, by the processor, a vector distance in a multi-dimensional space described by the semantic embeddings between the respective candidate image and the target image, and wherein the similarity score for each candidate image represents a degree of similarity between the target phenotype and the respective candidate phenotype; determining, by the processor, a threshold similarity score; and determining, by the processor, those candidate images having similarity scores that satisfy the threshold similarity score, wherein the target phenotype is a healthy phenotype, wherein the candidate images having similarity scores that satisfy the threshold similarity score have respective candidate phenotypes corresponding to the healthy phenotype, and wherein those candidate images having similarity scores that do not satisfy the threshold similarity score have respective candidate phenotypes corresponding to an unhealthy phenotype.
 24. A method, comprising: preparing a multi-well sample plate with a target biological cell having a target phenotype and candidate biological cells; applying a variety of candidate treatment regimens to each of the candidate biological cells; recording a target image of the target biological cell; recording candidate images of each of the candidate biological cells, each having a respective candidate phenotype arising in response to the candidate treatment regimen being applied; receiving, by a computing device, the target image and the candidate images; obtaining, by the computing device, a semantic embedding associated with the target image, wherein the semantic embedding associated with the target image is generated using a machine-learned, deep metric network model; obtaining, by the computing device for each candidate image, a semantic embedding associated with the respective candidate image, wherein the semantic embedding associated with the respective candidate image is generated using the machine-learned, deep metric network model; determining, by the computing device, a similarity score for each candidate image, wherein determining the similarity score for a respective candidate image comprises computing, by the computing device, a vector distance in a multi-dimensional space described by the semantic embeddings between the respective candidate image and the target image, and wherein the similarity score for each candidate image represents a degree of similarity between the target phenotype and the respective candidate phenotype; determining, by the computing device, a threshold similarity score; and determining, by the computing device, those candidate images having similarity scores that satisfy the threshold similarity score, wherein the target phenotype is a healthy phenotype, wherein the candidate images having similarity scores that satisfy the threshold similarity score have respective candidate phenotypes corresponding to the healthy phenotype, and wherein those candidate images having similarity scores that do not satisfy the threshold similarity score have respective candidate phenotypes corresponding to an unhealthy phenotype; and selecting, by the computing device, a preferred treatment regimen among the variety of candidate treatment regimens based on the similarity scores. 